Browsing by Subject "Experimental archaeology"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Open Access
    Documenting differences between early stone age flake production systems: An experimental model and archaeological verification
    (Public Library of Science, 2015) Presnyakova, Darya; Archer, Will; Braun, David R; Flear, Wesley
    This study investigates morphological differences between flakes produced via “core and flake” technologies and those resulting from bifacial shaping strategies. We investigate systematic variation between two technological groups of flakes using experimentally produced assemblages, and then apply the experimental model to the Cutting 10 Mid -Pleistocene archaeological collection from Elandsfontein, South Africa. We argue that a specific set of independent variables--and their interactions--including external platform angle, platform depth, measures of thickness variance and flake curvature should distinguish between these two technological groups. The role of these variables in technological group separation was further investigated using the Generalized Linear Model as well as Linear Discriminant Analysis. The Discriminant model was used to classify archaeological flakes from the Cutting 10 locality in terms of their probability of association, within either experimentally developed technological group. The results indicate that the selected independent variables play a central role in separating core and flake from bifacial technologies. Thickness evenness and curvature had the greatest effect sizes in both the Generalized Linear and Discriminant models. Interestingly the interaction between thickness evenness and platform depth was significant and played an important role in influencing technological group membership. The identified interaction emphasizes the complexity in attempting to distinguish flake production strategies based on flake morphological attributes. The results of the discriminant function analysis demonstrate that the majority of flakes at the Cutting 10 locality were not associated with the production of the numerous Large Cutting Tools found at the site, which corresponds with previous suggestions regarding technological behaviors reflected in this assemblage.
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    Open Access
    New experiments and a model-driven approach for interpreting Middle Stone Age Lithic Point Function using the Edge Damage Distribution Method
    (Public Library of Science, 2016) Schoville, Benjamin J; Brown, Kyle S; Harris, Jacob A; Wilkins, Jayne
    The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is associated with early evidence for symbolic material culture and complex technological innovations. However, one of the most visible aspects of MSA technologies are unretouched triangular stone points that appear in the archaeological record as early as 500,000 years ago in Africa and persist throughout the MSA. How these tools were being used and discarded across a changing Pleistocene landscape can provide insight into how MSA populations prioritized technological and foraging decisions. Creating inferential links between experimental and archaeological tool use helps to establish prehistoric tool function, but is complicated by the overlaying of post-depositional damage onto behaviorally worn tools. Taphonomic damage patterning can provide insight into site formation history, but may preclude behavioral interpretations of tool function. Here, multiple experimental processes that form edge damage on unretouched lithic points from taphonomic and behavioral processes are presented. These provide experimental distributions of wear on tool edges from known processes that are then quantitatively compared to the archaeological patterning of stone point edge damage from three MSA lithic assemblages--Kathu Pan 1, Pinnacle Point Cave 13B, and Die Kelders Cave 1. By using a model-fitting approach, the results presented here provide evidence for variable MSA behavioral strategies of stone point utilization on the landscape consistent with armature tips at KP1, and cutting tools at PP13B and DK1, as well as damage contributions from post-depositional sources across assemblages. This study provides a method with which landscape-scale questions of early modern human tool-use and site-use can be addressed.
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    Variability in bifacial technology at Elandsfontein, Western Cape, South Africa: a geometric morphometric approach
    (Elsevier, 2010) Archer, Will; Braun, David R
    This study applies a new three-dimensional measurement technique to determine the major source of variation in the Acheulian bifacial tool collection from the Middle Pleistocene site of Elandsfontein, South Africa. This three-dimensional technique is compared with conventional two-dimensional methods to investigate which methods capture morphological variation in the assemblage most comprehensively. Additionally, a set of experimentally produced bifacial tools are incorporated into the analyses to isolate the behavioral pattern underpinning identified variation in the archaeological assemblage. The interpretative breadth of current models explaining morphological variation in bifacial tools is then tested against the pattern identified in the Elandsfontein assemblage. Variation appears to be related to the consistent application of a specific reduction strategy associated with the early stages of bifacial tool manufacture. The intensity with which this strategy was applied seems to have been mediated by the availability of raw material that was suitable for the production of large bifacial tools.